Viatris to Pay $335 Million to Resolve Opioid-Related Claims

Viatris said on Monday it would pay up to $335 million over nine years as part of a nationwide settlement to resolve opioid-related claims against the drugmaker.

Shares of the Pennsylvania-based company, formed by the merger of Mylan and Pfizer’s Upjohn business in 2020, fell 3% in early trading.

Viatris is among several drugmakers that have faced lawsuits on claims over their role in concealing the risks of addictive pain drugs. The company sells opioid products in the form of its painkiller Ultiva and the Fentanyl Transdermal System, which is a generic version of Johnson & Johnson’s branded fentanyl patch product, Duragesic.

According to government data, these lawsuits commenced in the early 2000s but have increased in frequency and profile in recent years. The earliest suits against opioid manufacturers such as Purdue Pharma were personal injury claims brought on behalf of persons with addiction who overdosed.

In January, Purdue Pharma and its Sackler family owners reached a $7.4 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits alleging that their pain medication OxyContin caused a widespread opioid addiction crisis in the U.S.

The opioid litigation has already resulted in more than $50 billion in settlements.

Opioid-related overdoses claimed more than 80,000 lives in 2023 and has led to 700,000 deaths over the past two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. Food and Drug administration has approved two naloxone-based nasal sprays — Emergent Biosolutions’ Narcan and Harm Reduction Therapeutics’ RiVive — for opioid overdose reversal.

Viatris also manufactures a generic injectable version of naloxone and is currently developing a novel delivery method for meloxicam — a non-opioid pain medication.

The drugmaker said it would pay between $27.5 million and $40 million annually toward state and local opioid initiatives as part of the settlement, but that does not constitute an admission of wrongdoing or liability.

(Reporting by Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Shilpi Majumdar)